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Edward Sharpe And The Magnetic Zeros: Tiny Desk Concert

Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros can't exactly slip into an office building unnoticed: Clad in the same clothes they'd worn at a concert the night before, the L.A. band's 10 ragtag misfits would have fit in far more seamlessly at, say, Burning Man. Seeming to exist in a blissed-out alternate universe — during the wonderful "Home," singer Jade Castrinos exclaims, "Good morning, everybody!" as the clock behind her reads 2:10 p.m. — this is a band whose performances beg to be seen as well as heard, not to mention shot through a wide-angle lens.

Surrounded by a whopping eight backing players — at 10 members, this is the biggest band ever to play a Tiny Desk Concert in the NPR Music offices — singers Alex Ebert and Castrinos still find a way to command attention, as they trade vocals amid a warm, shambling concoction of keyboards, percussion, guitars, accordion, trumpet and more. Playing three songs from their debut album (Up From Below), they have little trouble re-creating its intoxicating mix of catchiness and goodwill, even if they had to wake up early to make it happen.

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Stephen Thompson is a writer, editor and reviewer for NPR Music, where he speaks into any microphone that will have him and appears as a frequent panelist on All Songs Considered. Since 2010, Thompson has been a fixture on the NPR roundtable podcast Pop Culture Happy Hour, which he created and developed with NPR correspondent Linda Holmes. In 2008, he and Bob Boilen created the NPR Music video series Tiny Desk Concerts, in which musicians perform at Boilen's desk. (To be more specific, Thompson had the idea, which took seconds, while Boilen created the series, which took years. Thompson will insist upon equal billing until the day he dies.)